Billy Camden | Schools Week

Schools urged to allocate places using admission lotteries

State schools should hand out places based on random admission ballots to ensure the country’s best comprehensives can’t tactically select wealthier pupils, the Sutton Trust has said. New research by the charity, released to coincide with national offer day, found the highest-attaining 500 comprehensive schools in England – based on GCSE results – are “significantly” […]

Emerging teacher pay gap threatens to ‘worsen recruitment crisis’

Pay increases for teachers in England have fallen behind the majority of other professions over the last six years, a new report has found. The emerging pay gap threatens to worsen the teacher recruitment and retention crisis, the NASUWT union has claimed. A report by Incomes Data Research (IDR), commissioned by the union, found teachers […]

Teach First plans 40% growth in social opportunity areas

Teach First plans to shift its focus away from London to six of the government’s 12 “opportunity areas”. Brett Wigdortz, the charity’s founder and outgoing chief executive, made the announcement during a school visit to Derby with the education secretary Justine Greening last week. He said the move would would be a 40 per cent […]

Schools call on MPs to fight ‘grossly unfair’ Progress 8

School leaders want MPs to fight the government’s “grossly unfair and discriminatory” Progress 8 measure that will award three times more points to pupils moving between top grades than those at the bottom of the scale. But sources close to the government insist the method is designed to protect rather than punish schools with lower-attaining […]

RSC Vicky Beer resigns to head new academy trust

Vicky Beer, regional schools commissioner for Lancashire and West Yorkshire, is stepping down after less than a year and a half in post to head up a new multi-academy trust. Beer (pictured above), who previously led the formative years of the Teaching School Council, will become an executive leader of the Greater Manchester Learning Trust […]

Two-year visa migrant teachers ease recruitment crisis

Schools are increasingly opting to employ migrant teachers on strict two year-only visas. The government’s Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) published its “review of teachers” report last week calling for computer science, Mandarin and general science teachers to be added to the government’s official occupation shortage list – jobs where there are not enough resident workers […]

Poor careers advice due to spending decisions by school leaders, skills minister claims

The skills and apprenticeships minster has warned there is “clearly something wrong” with schools where “not enough” good careers advice is delivered as he launched the government’s ‘comprehensive careers strategy’. But Robert Halfon dismissed that funding was the sole issue, claiming instead it was due to the way a “school chooses to spend” their money. […]

Black girls take the lead in STEM subjects

Black girls are the only ethnic group that outnumber their male peers taking science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM) A-levels, research exclusively shared with Schools Week reveals. The finding comes from further analysis by think tank LKMco of a report they co-authored with Education Datalab for the Social Mobility Commission last month. When it looked […]

NASUWT claim most teachers miss out on 1% pay rise

Almost six in ten teachers will not get this year’s government proposed pay rise, capped at 1 per cent, new union research has revealed. A survey of more than 8,000 NASUWT members exposes, it says, the “deeply concerning” picture of “how easy it is for schools to pay teachers as little as they can get […]